production of semen was completed in the blood vessels and assigned no function in
this respect to the testes, Herophilus believed that the production of semen took place
in both testes, which he called didymoi, ‘twins’, and in the spermatic vessels, the
epididymis. In women he discovered the ovaries, which he identified with the testicles
in men, and the fallopian tubes; this had the effect of allowing women more of a role
in reproduction, as opposed to being merely the incubator of the male’s sperm.
Allowing that there were specific female afflictions relating to menstruation and
lactation, he argued that there were no diseases specifically related to women in the
sense that they were not constituted, as in some earlier medical thinking, of a different
substance from the human male. Erasistratus worked on similar scientific lines making
discoveries concerning the digestive and vascular systems. He regarded the heart as
a pump, though like previous anatomists he believed the arteries to be vessels for
pneuma; blood spurting from a ruptured artery being explained by the blood rushing
into the vacuum caused by the invisibly escaping pneuma.Some indications of his
practice as a physician survive. He did not favour phlebotomy, blood-letting, as readily
as some of his contemporaries. He wrote a treatise on hygiene, stressing the need for
a regular diet and exercise in the maintenance of good health. The most famous
diagnosis attributed in some accounts to Erasistratus was of the disease of Antiochus
Soter, eldest son of Seleucus, king of Antioch, who had secretly fallen in love with his
stepmother Stratonice. Where other physicians failed, Erasistratus observed that the
prince’s skin became hotter, his colour deepened and his pulse quickened whenever
the queen entered the room. He correctly divined the cause to be the physical effect
of his mental and emotional condition, quite a modern diagnosis.
Mathematics, Astronomy and Inventions
‘Let no one who is ignorant of mathematics enter here’ is said to have been on the
doorway of Plato’s Academy. It is fitting that in the Elementsof Euclid (flc.300) the
Greeks provided the world with an advanced mathematical primer that was
unsurpassed for the best part of 2,000 years. One of the many theorems demonstrated
there is that of Pythagoras in which the square of the hypotenuse of a right angled
triangle equals the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
One of the greatest mathematicians and inventors was Archimedes of Syracuse
(c.287–212). His particular interest was geometry reflected in a number of extant
works such as On the Measurement of the Circleand On the Sphere and Cylinder. Allied
to this is his practical interest in mechanics which occasioned a famous anecdote:
supposedly asked by the Syracusan king Hiero to determine whether a crown given
tohim was pure gold, inspiration came to him while entering a public bath as he
observed the height of the water rising due his own weight. He exclaimed eureka‘I
have discovered it’ and ran home naked with the idea of making two crowns of the
216 THE GREEKS